Versta Research is a marketing research and public opinion polling firm that helps you answer critical questions with customized research and analytical expertise.
Explore industry trends, research methods, and tips for your own research projects in the Versta Research Blog. All opinions are our own, and some may change over time.
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When people refuse to participate in your research surveys or say “no thanks” to your invitation to join a panel or focus group, it can hurt. Not just because it feels like a rejection of the awesome work you are doing, but also because it means you have to worry about the dreaded potential of…
There are plenty of good reasons to use Net Promoter Scores (NPS). They are based on sound measurement, are simple to use, are conceptually compelling, and are widely known by business executives outside of market research. But you know something is amiss when your bank starts asking how likely you are to recommend the online…
Market research almost always relies (or should rely) on U.S. Census data. The data are rigorous, reliable, and fundamentally important to every business, not-for-profit, and government body in the United States. So if you get a package that looks like this, as a neighbor did last week, here is what you should do: Open it…
Tomorrow we’re giving a talk at LIMRA’s annual Marketing and Research Conference in Baltimore. The topic? Creating spectacular infographics for market research. It builds upon our Newsletter article from last July, and upon our subsequent top-five article in Quirk’s. And thanks to our own Peter Kowalski, who has extraordinary talent designing infographics for research,…
I’ve never been a huge fan of talking about generations like Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, or Millennials. Age differences make sense to me. But the dividing lines between “generations” commonly used in the media and in our industry seem so arbitrary. In fact, those dividing lines put me in the same generation as my aunts…
Venn diagrams are useful conceptual tools, which is why business people love them, and why programs like Word and PowerPoint incorporate them into their suite of “smart art” tools. But as useful as they are conceptually, Venn diagrams are also maddeningly tricky and problematic for data visualization. One reason is that accurate Venn diagrams are…
If you are not testing all of your surveys for how they function on mobile, you absolutely should be. Almost half of respondents in our most recent U.S. census-rep survey completed the survey on mobile devices. This included 30% who completed it on phones, and 17% who completed it on tablets. Here is a quick…
Sometimes technology moves so fast it solves a problem before we solve it in other ways. Such is the case with grid-type questions and mobile surveys. People are doing surveys on mobile devices all the time now, so researchers are finally re-thinking how to design surveys. Getting rid of grids has been one mantra of…
Last month we were honored to be on the main stage at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:Think 2015 Conference, sharing with the nation’s top research and advertising executives insights from our work with Wells Fargo. I use the word honored for two reasons. First, we were selected from over 200 entries for one of the…
If you ever have trouble separating all the hype of new methods and technology from the reality of whether those methods work, turn to the sober and decidedly non-hyped world of academic research. Some of the smartest people in the world build their careers by pursuing scientific research about research methods. They publish their results…